I drove home and told Timmy, who was half asleep, about the Rdq guys arriving and about what Hunny had told me about him and Art and their — marriage was the best word for it. Timmy heard what I was saying about Hunny and Art and squeezed my hand. He also said he was truly grateful that I had not brought any Tibetans home to sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed.
I was barely awake myself when the phone rang at seven thirty in the morning. It was Card Sanders and his tone was cool.
“I just checked with East Greenbush. There’s no sign yet of Mrs. Van Horn.”
“Jeez. This is really getting worrisome. Has the fbi been brought in yet?”
“No, because there’s no indication of foul play. Huntington’s mother is just an old lady who wandered out the front door of a nursing home. In fact, there’s no indication of anything at all. She just went poof. It’s very odd.”
“That’s what it looks like. But with no corpse having turned up, it sure looks as if somebody picked her up. But who? Family and friends all deny any contact with her, and surely strangers giving her a ride would have seen news reports and alerted the sheriff.”
I was in the kitchen with my juice and muffin, the Times Union spread out on the counter, and Timmy was upstairs performing his before-work extensive toilette.
Sanders said, “I’m still curious about these people the Brienings who Mrs. Van Horn used to work for.”
“How come?”
“For one thing, Mr. Van Horn told me he is considering giving the Brienings half a billion dollars because Clyde Briening is his biological father.”
“It’s a strange, heartbreaking story.”
“Yeah, but more strange than heartbreaking.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, when Hunny Van Horn was born, Clyde Briening was just eight years of age.”
168 Richard Stevenson
“Nah, that couldn’t be.”
“That’s right, Strachey. Fathering a child at that age is pretty close to being biologically impossible. But I checked the ages of both men.”
“It would make it into Ripley’s.”
“I am relieved that Mrs. Van Horn didn’t have an affair with an eight-year-old.”
“You bet.”
“So then what’s the real deal with the Brienings? I’m nagged by Mr. Van Horn’s saying on Bill O’Malley — I’ve TiVoed it five times now — that if his mother’s disappearance had anything to do with the Brienings, not to worry, that he would deal with them.
I’m thinking strongly now that there is a connection, and I’m also thinking strongly that you know exactly what that connection is. No? If I’m mistaken, please explain to me how I’ve failed to grasp the obvious.”
“Look,” I said, meaning it, “if there was a connection, why wouldn’t I tell you and all the other law enforcement folks so that you all could wrap up this whole missing person sad situation pronto? It is possible that the Brienings might have spooked Mrs.
Van Horn in some way and she took off for wherever she took off to. But I have spoken with the Brienings. And believe me, they don’t have Mrs. Van Horn in their custody, and they don’t know where she is. It’s to their advantage that she be safe and in the tender arms of the staff at Golden Gardens so that Clyde and Arletta can go ahead and press Hunny for the half billion.
Having her running around loose and exposed to possible danger is exactly what they do not desire. Don’t you see what I’m saying, Lieutenant?”
“I do see, and it would be really insensitive of me to go out to Cobleskill and question the Brienings if Clyde really was Mr. Van Horn’s father and I stirred up some ugly family mess that’s none of my business or the business of the police in any way. But Mr.
Van Horn was obviously lying when he told me that real-father bullshit story. So why don’t you allay my growing suspicions by telling me the fucking truth about this family of psychopathic liars for a change?”
I said, “Okay, look. I do know a little more. That must be obvious. But if you knew the truth it would just place you in an ethical bind that you really don’t want to be in. You know people in the department who know me, and they can vouch for me. They can tell you that if I say you’re better off not knowing everything there is to know about the Brienings and the Van Horns, then you can trust that assessment. Just ask.”
Sanders snorted. “Strachey, I’m a police officer, not a third-grader who needs to be kept out of an R-rated movie. Just fucking tell me what’s going on here.”
I said, “I can’t.”
“Why?’
“I’ve explained that. You might be obligated to report something to the DA. In the end, it would all turn out okay for the Van Horns and not so great for the Brienings, I feel confident.
But this has to do with family image and standing with church ladies and small-town embarrassment and shame. The legal part of it is the least of it. Or is according to the Van Horns. And it’s their decision to make.”
I could hear Sanders breathing. He said, “Hunny Van Horn is concerned about image? This I find hard to believe.”
“With your indulgence, I can’t really say any more.”
“One of the Van Horns did something to the Brienings that was so bad that it’s worth half a billion dollars to the Van Horns to cover up. For that amount of money, it must have been murder.”
“You’d think so.”
“Of course, these days celebrities like Mr. Van Horn can get away with pretty much anything. You get drunk and shove a school bus off a cliff, and then you go on Barbara Walters and cry and get a nice book deal and maybe serve a month in the county lockup and then you get out and bake sheet cakes at a soup 170 Richard Stevenson kitchen, and that’s all there is to it. What’s this embarrassment and shame stuff? They don’t exist anymore. Haven’t the Van Horns heard about that?”
“They are not culturally up-to-date, Lieutenant.”
“Mrs. Van Horn, once she’s back, she could get a stand-up comedy gig on Jay Leno. At Golden Gardens, the staff all say she’s the joke lady. I was over there, and I had a hard time getting people to talk about Rita because all they wanted to do was tell me how funny she is and how she keeps everybody on the staff in stitches.”
The “joke lady”? This all sounded familiar, and I made a mental note to ask Antoine and Hunny about a phone call Mrs.
Van Horn had received — in fact a series of phone calls — that suddenly seemed important.
When I got over to Hunny’s house, Marylou had gone off to work at the tax department and Antoine had already picked up the twins and two of the Rdq guys — the ones with the mental gPs capabilities — and headed up to Lake George. Shoemaker and the other communards went out for a walk through the North End, Hunny said. The night before they had seen a Hummer parked in someone’s driveway, and they wanted to see if they could levitate it and shake the evil spirits out.
Hunny told me he had talked to the sheriff ’s department in East Greenbush and there was still no clue as to what had become of his mother. He said the officers were feeling frustrated and more and more worried, and so was he.
I asked, “Did Lieutenant Sanders call you?”
“No.”
“He called me. He found out that Clyde Briening was eight years old when you were born.”
“Whoopsy daisy.”
“Yeah.”
“That Clyde. What a stud. Ooo-eee. So the detective knows I fibbed? Oh boy.”
